This post is not cancer related. But hey...it's my blog so I get to decide what I post!! : )
Because it is Veterans Day.
God only knows where we would be without the service and
sacrifice of our brave veterans. To those presently in the military- stay safe and THANK YOU.
This is my favorite veteran story…
About 20 years ago, I had floated to the medical
short stay unit and had a patient who was having an MRI guided procedure. I asked him if he had any metal filings or
shrapnel exposure. It was the day before
Thanksgiving, so it was ridiculously quiet and slow, and there were
only a couple of patients there. This
gentleman said “yes” he had shrapnel exposure, started crying and “did I have time
to hear about it?”. About one and a half hours later I had heard his
story of how he was at Omaha Beach/part of D-Day invasion.
He spoke of the scene, the friends he lost,
the nurse who helped take care of him afterwards. He wept intermittently throughout. He told me that he had never told his story
until that day, not to his wife, not to his grown son. I asked him why he was telling me. Basically because he was getting older, I had
asked about the shrapnel (a standard question if you are having an MRI) and
because I reminded him of his nurse post D-day.
I obviously thanked him for his service, thanked him for
honoring me by sharing his story with me.
I urged him to share his story with his son, as it was an amazing and
important one.
A few weeks later he
returned with his son to give me a wooden bowl that he had made for me. He had started a dialogue with his son about
his war experience. It was one of those
encounters as a nurse that you never forget, and I think of him of him every Veterans and
Memorial Day (and every time I use that bowl).
Some of my favorite veterans
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